In many landscaping projects, it is desirable to provide lighting for either safety or aesthetic concerns. One particularly popular way of providing lighting is through a series of lights that are mounted above a ground surface adjacent to a walkway or drive way. These types of lights are typically mounted to a post that is partially buried in a ground surface. The post thereby provides a stable support for the lights. The post also provides a means to discretely feed buried wires used to power the lights into the light fixture. It is also desirable to provide discrete access to telephone, cable or electrical sources within a landscaping project for user enjoyment or to provide power for landscaping tools such as blowers, trimmers and the like.
There are some prior art examples that attempt to satisfy this need. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,858,877 and 5,586,742 each disclose a lightpost for supporting a light fixture that includes a main post, a cap and a mounting structure. Another design for a landscape lightpost is set forth in Schuster, U.S. Pat. No. D430,942, which is assigned the assignee of the present application. The Schuster landscape lightpost includes a main post, a cap and a fin assembly. Arlington Industries, Inc of Scranton, Pa., markets a landscape lightpost having a substantially square profile to the main post and cap. The Arlington landscape lightpost has an aperture in one side thereof that provides access to a region where electrical connections are made. A cover plate is attached to the lightpost to cover the aperture and thereby restrict access to the area where the electrical connections are made.
However, none of the prior art landscape lightpost designs provides a cylindrical post with a substantially enclosed and sealed wire compartment, which protects the wire connections from exposure to the environmental elements, provides a means for securely connecting a wire or cabling system and provides easy access to the wire connections.